“Don’t touch me!” Jess yelled, recoiling and pulling her left leg away from him. “Get away from me.” She pushed pillows to cover her leg. She still wore her jeans and sneakers, with her hoodie on top.
The man withdrew in haste. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“Jessica, are you okay? You were out for a few minutes, gave us a scare.” Her mother’s voice echoed from a hallway, and an instant later Celeste appeared through the bedroom door, rushing to Jess’s side. “This is Baron Ruspoli. You remember, from the museum tour?”
That’s right, the castle museum tour. Her mind was still foggy, a dull ache behind her eyes, with the metallic tang of blood in her pasty mouth. A breeze from open windows pulled freshness into the musty room. Jess closed her eyes, drawing her body together. The tour. The police. She opened her eyes in panic, trying to focus on the two men in the corner of the room.
“Please, call me Giovanni.” The Baron stood but hovered over her, the boy clinging to his side.
The boy. Hector, Jess remembered. The Baron’s son.
Jess craned her neck to one side to look out of the half-open door to the room leading into the hallway. No one else out there. She looked back at the two men in the corner of the room. They didn’t look like police. “Mom, are—”
“Everything is fine, Jessica.” Celeste sat beside her. “Calm down. You took a nasty spill.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” added Baron Giovanni, taking a step back.
“Where are we?” she asked her mother. This wasn’t their room. They were supposed to stay one night here, in a small cottage at the side of the castle; part of the whirlwind “castles in Chianti” mini-tour Jess had organized.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I moved you into our private quarters,” Giovanni said. “This is a room in the main tower of the castle. The doctor is on his way.” Giovanni slipped his hands into his pockets and took another step back while clearing his throat. “Your mother said it would be all right.”
So I’m in a castle tower. It sounded like a prison. Jess pushed her arms down to sit higher, and pain shot through her head. Reaching one hand up, she felt a goose egg on the side of her head. Tender.
“Nico and Leone saved you,” Celeste said, her voice low and soothing, motioning to the two men standing behind Baron Giovanni.
One of the men, the younger one, waved a tiny salute. It was Nico, their tour guide from earlier. Where the Baron had rugged good looks, Nico had more of a boyish charm—tousled brown hair pulled back to one side, a carefully groomed beard of two-day-old stubble on a slender, smiling face that radiated warmth. Jess smiled back.
The other person was the old man who had poked his head into the museum, the one with white fly-away hair over the deeply tanned scalp. He’d announced the police at the gate. The pipe still in his mouth, he narrowed his eyes and nodded at Jess.
“You would have fallen right off the ledge, twenty feet at least.” Celeste added, “They might have saved your life.”
How was she so careless? Jess cursed at herself. The alcohol did it, added to her nerves at seeing the police. “Thank you, Nico and Leone,” she mumbled.
Her head throbbed, but it wasn’t just the fall. A midday hangover from four glasses of sparkling wine at brunch contributed, she was sure. “Thank you,” Jess repeated, “but we can’t stay.”
She had to find a phone and call the lawyer. Looking out the nearest window, she scanned the courtyard for any sign of police.
Giovanni caught her looking outside. “That’s L’Olio,” he said, thinking she was looking at the tree in the middle of the courtyard, “our matriarch, the old olive tree. Had you visited her yet?”
It was mentioned in the castle tour brochure. Jess shook her head, but took a closer look—the tree’s roots dug their way into the ground like old arthritic fingers, gnarled and misshapen, an equally tortured knot of branches spreading out above the roots in a half-dead tangle.
“Over three thousand years old, our L’Olio,” Giovanni added. “She was here when the Etruscans dug their caves into the hills below us.”
“It’s beautiful,” Jess lied. Old. Twisted. The tree looked in pain, hanging on to a bitter end. She’d never be like that. She would never hang on past her time.
“You didn’t finish the tour?” Giovanni looked at Jess, then Celeste. “Then I insist. Please make use of these rooms, and I will take you on a proper tour of the castle myself.” He smiled and nodded. “When you are feeling better, of course.”
Jess smiled thinly. “We can’t—”
“I do have a confession.” Giovanni smiled awkwardly.
This completely threw Jess off. She blinked. “A confession?”
“When I arrived, we passed in the courtyard, do you remember?”
Jess did. The deep scar above his eye. It wasn’t a face she would forget. Jess nodded.